Over 2000 years have passed since the Great Wall was built to keep those deserving (or rich) safe from a zombie hoard. Histories have been rewritten and beliefs have changed. When the wall is torn down, a war erupts, causing the horrific deaths of t...
It's a simplistic thought for an abstract concept, but it's true. Stars spin and collide, worlds erupt with life before driving themselves to extinction and people... Well... We all hope, that's the point. However wonderful or abysmal our lives, there's always the hope for something more. Money, life, afterlife. We're never content.
I did, for a long time. It's inherent in our makeup, so I couldn't really avoid it, I suppose. Coming from the Shadows as I did, the Big H was our sustenance. Thanks to the distinct lack of real food, we had little else to fill our bellies or, at least, our souls.
It's also a lie. One big, massive lie.
The Shadows aren't as bad as they make out, but they've never actually lived there. To them, with everything aplenty, need is something that happens to others, less fortunate. That's why it was called the Shadows. It sounds better than the slums or underprivileged. Shadows are dark areas you don't need to look at. They can be ignored. Forgotten about.
But, always more.
When I first heard about the campaign for The Sphere, I laughed. It was ridiculous, right? Turning the entire planet into a globe so it would, effectively, be infinite, was the joking aside of a mentally disturbed President. It was impossible and would require the tearing down of The Great Wall. That thought was terrifying. The wall had existed forever, and had protected us from The Void since the beginning of time. It kept out the horror that lay beyond it, being insurmountable from both sides. We were safe, enclosed in our lives that should have been filled with all we could wish for.
If it wasn't for damned Hope.
"I wonder what it's like on the other side," he'd said in an interview recently. "I hope, one day, to find out."
That was all it took. The furore supporting something that had never been contemplated previously was tumultuous and as rapid as a pandemic's spread. It infected so many people, the detractors quickly became the minority.
And, yesterday, the gravity bombs were fired simultaneously along the circumference of the entire world. The Great Wall crumbled under combined pressures it – and us – was never meant to endure. And the beautifully flat Earth would, we were promised, fold in upon itself, with the edges being pulled inextricably towards each other.
And, for the sake of one person's hope, everything would be changed, hopefully for the better. No more Shadows when everything could be exposed to the light.
Except, the Shadows are deeper since everyone has taken refuge in them. Where once lived the detritus, now hides the rest of us.
No one thought we could be wrong. History was the factual record of our existence, wasn't it? The books and the films and the television shows and... well, everything we'd ever known with every fibre of our being, couldn't be wrong.
But it's too late. The Great Wall is gone. The gravity bombs succeeded only in destroying our last hope. Those it kept out have swept in as a true pandemic.
My father called them 'zombies.'
Or he did before he was bitten and became one.
I hope it doesn't hurt.
Hoppla! Dieses Bild entspricht nicht unseren inhaltlichen Richtlinien. Um mit dem Veröffentlichen fortfahren zu können, entferne es bitte oder lade ein anderes Bild hoch.
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